Via the Weekly Standard comes an indication that Barack Obama might as well get on the phone and tell Chuck Hagel that it’s not happening:

“I’d have to study his record.” Let me explain why this is so devastating a comment coming from Senator Schumer about ex-Senator Hagel… oh, you’ve figured it out already? But let me explicit: Chuck Hagel served in the Senate from ’97 to ’09. Chuck Schumer has been serving in the Senate since ’99. So Schumer knows exactly what Hagel’s record is. He was there for pretty much all of it. And while I despise Chuck Schumer as a miserable, glad-handling, smarmy so-and-so he’s still really good at it. It is impossible to believe that Senator Schumer could be even remotely unaware of Hagel’s checkered foreign policy record.

Which is why Hot Air‘s Ed Morrissey noted that “‘I’m not going to comment until the President makes a nomination’ is code for ‘Mr. President, don’t make this nomination.’” Which is unsurprising: Chuck Schumer is an ambitious man, and he fully expects to be in the Senate long enough to see Barack Obama become a Carter-level embarrassing footnote in the Democratic party’s historical archives. Given this administration’s notoriously bad track record at picking Cabinet nominees, it’s not really unusual that said ambitious man would want to avoid even the mildest of questionable nominees… let alone a potential disaster’s like Hagel’s.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: “The president can’t be perceived to be rolled by his opponents.” When it comes to Barack Obama’s Cabinet nominees, Andrea Mitchell… that ship has sailed.